Imagine that the Church you love is dying.

[Jan Edmiston, an associate presbyter for Chicago Presbytery, has been writing about “closing churches” in her blog.  And while it’s been good food for thought, it’s stirred up some other feelings for me.  Here’s an unsolicited response, not meant to be critical of her work, but in conversation—that in writing, helped me work through some angst—not about Jan or her work, but about where we find ourselves in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).] 

Jan Edmiston, a gifted Presbytery staff-person whose work I respect, wrote in her blogpost of July 8^th, 2015, that we should “Imagine that the Church [we] love is dying.” 

(You should check out Jan’s blog and the rest of her post here: https://achurchforstarvingartists.wordpress.com/2015/07/08/the-difficult-truth-about-creating-the-future-church/). 

Respectfully, I can’t. 

The Church belongs to God.  God is a God of life.  For me, the death of a/the Church is a non-starter. 

But I also know well what Jan and other church leaders want to get at.  Both we as individuals and the congregations and councils we’re a part of, need to “be the Church”—the real Church of Jesus Christ.  We can’t simply cling to our old buildings and the ways that have met us where we are comfortable and wait to be relieved, if we want to serve Jesus Christ!  To serve Jesus we must be Jesus—emulating his work and witness. 

Churches aren’t dying.  They’re struggling to look like Jesus. 

We all know this.  And it’s still hard. 

I’ve been grieving about my beloved Church for a while now.  It’s very much like she’s dying.  But I’ve experienced the illness not just in places we can identify and agree “where churches need to close”—it’s more like an illness that afflicts us from top to bottom, and bottom to top, left to right and all around.  It’s surely related to sinfulness, real and present and unavoidable when you get human beings involved.  It was that way for Jesus, too.  You do remember the stories? 

I’ve spent a quarter-century in leadership in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) serving congregations and at each level of the church’s councils.  I’ve witnessed the adoption of one downsizing and consolidation plan after another as we’ve practiced to perfection “circle the wagons,” responding to decline in members, money, and ministry.  We’ve chosen re-allocating dollars and shifting position descriptions to meet new realities rather than re-envisioning and reconnecting in response to God’s continuing and ongoing call to us.  In response to our fears, we’ve done our very best to preserve the status quo, trying to make the decline as less-painful as possible.  So now, there’s little downsizing and shifting work left to be done; and each adjustment really hurts. 

It’s true.  The Church needs some kind of transfusion.  And in her blog piece, Jan sees one kind of hopeful possibility where the generosity of Jesus looks absent:

“We have churches that need to close. They no longer serve anyone but themselves, and even that service is barely satisfying much less life-changing. They exist for themselves. They vie for personal power. (“I’m in charge of the kitchen fund and you can’t have any money for new spoons unless you come through me.”).” 

And she’s right about everything past the word, “close.” 

Here’s my struggle with closing.  All of the congregations and councils I’ve ever served or heard about, in some way, at one time or another (but not always or in all ways), fit this description.  And somehow, when we talk about closing churches we don’t’ talk out loud about ALL the congregations that fit Jan’s criteria, where “service is barely satisfying much less life-changing; where they exist for themselves; where they vie for personal power—oh, and by the way many have plenty of members and money to keep going for decades!  Instead, we talk as if we’re working from a list of churches where the “data” empirically dictates they are “no longer viable” because membership is too small, the corporation is financially caput, and the building is located in a non-vital place. 

Have we really forgotten what Jesus and his disciples looked like? 

True.  It’d be real nice if we could eliminate the drag of those “less fortunate” churches unable to sustain themselves and be able to use their unexhausted resources in other places.  But it just sounds too much like the disciples with Jesus in the deserted place: “These people need something to eat and we can’t help them.  Can you send them away?” 

I recognize the practicality—there may be way too many congregations with less than 12 adherents on our Church’s roster; but the proposals for moving them on sound a lot like that scene from Monty Python’s Holy Grail, where the cart to collect the dead plague victims is wheeled by with an invitation to “bring out the dead; ” only then, a man appears to “pass off” a relative “who’s not dead yet;” then the argument ensues about not being able to accept people are “aren’t dead yet;” then the official whacks the clearly “not dead yet” man in the head so he’s more passably dead. 

I feel whacked. 

Simply shifting the money from churches that “need to close” to churches that deserve to remain open is nothing more than a shell game.  Because we’re talking about the Church of Jesus Christ that can look alive or not-so-much in all kinds of forms! 

From where I sit, while closing churches helps us more realistically “balance the books,” the real need is for all of us individually and corporately to participate in the transformed life demonstrated, offered, and inaugurated by Jesus Christ!  Because the same kind of transformation that leads some of us into brave new things is the transformation that’s needed for congregations to joyfully participate in sharing everything that’s available to them for the promotion of the Kingdom of God!  Then, it’s not a demand to get out of the way, it’s a gift.  Jesus is God’s gift.  God is always giving.  God gives life, even where we can only see death—for example. 

The work that we have to do, individually and collectively, is “Jesus”—it’s both the “new to us” and the old answer! 

The true church, in all its forms, looks like Jesus.  Both uncomfortably poor and extraordinarily generous. 

But, “We have churches that need to close,” sounds a lot like “get off my lawn.” (And I don’t think Jan is saying that, at all!)

I wish the conversation was a lot more focused on living and looking like Jesus.  I wish we asked ourselves at every level, “Are we looking like Jesus?”  And if the answer is “no,” or “not as much as we could,” then, if we want to try to live and look like Jesus, this helps offer a corrective course.  For me, this is a much more productive way of discerning together what God is calling us to be and become. 

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania